The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

My first mushroom trip!

So last night my girlfriend took 33 pretty small, fresh psilocybe semilanceata (couldn't weigh them) and had a pretty varied experience. It was her first time taking mushrooms although she is experienced in psychedelic drugs. This is her account...

Right so before I took them my boyfriend, an experienced mushroom picker & user, was saying 'don't be disappointed if you don't get a proper buzz' but little did we know what was to come!

It started almost immediately could feel waves and tingles all over my body and I just felt like more than stoned, I also felt very shivery but not naturally cold on the way up.

Then my boyfriend was upstairs making a cuppa and it felt like he'd been gone FOREVER but I was happy enough and everything was in proper HD and apparently I was giggling loads to myself. I kept shouting up at him asking when he was coming down. He'd only been up there 5 mins but it literally felt like ages and I started wondering if he'd ever come down but I was still pretty entertained by the mild visuals I was getting and the uncontrollable giggling.

Then I was trying to roll a cig and smoke it but I literally could not do ANYTHING on them, everything took seemingly hours to do! and by this point I was feeling as if I needed to stay in one little space as I was feeling very small! Then I was laughing at my hands cos it was like they wouldn't work unless I stared at them and watched them closely as they did the thing they were trying to do. I couldn't hold the cig or lift it to my mouth unless I was looking at my hand and I was in hysterics and had a kind of 'tut what are you like?' attitude to my hands!

Then I needed to go to the toilet but my legs and whole body felt like jelly and I was getting more and more vivid visuals and a lime green and bright yellow haze was covering everything. At this point when I looked at the ceiling I could see like bright pink & green spider webby things but more geometric covering every inch of the walls and throbbing and glowing. So my boyfriend helped me to the toilet and it took what felt like an age as I continued in hysterics.

Then when I got on the bed it started getting good, I felt like I could see everything from the mushroom's perspective like I was some woodland creature, I felt tiny and my boyfriend was a giant looking in on my world which I was laughing to myself about. My boyfriend was leaning over me and it was like he was looking into a little hole I had made for myself! He was also feeding me water (as I couldn't work my hands!) and the cup was absolutely massive to me, which I found amusing (funnily enough the cup was red with white spots so it felt right at home in my woodland themed trip!) I was sooooooo comfy I've never been so comfy in my life. I felt like a bear hibernating! or some cute woodland creature taking cover from the rain. I kept telling my boyfriend to stay still and whisper and there was some force keeping me in my little cosy spot like I didn't dare move out of it or even look in another direction, it was at this point I started gripping my boyfriends arm and holding on to him.

I was all curled up feeling like I was in a little nest and laughing my head off and I was getting these orgasmic tingly waves of comfort all over my body, my boyfriend started stroking my chin and I kept asking him to do it harder because my skin felt to me like when you rub an animals skin. I then felt like a cat and asked my boyfriend if I was purring! I could actually feel my skin wrinkle like a cats would under his fingers and felt my breathing as if I was purring. That part was absolutely lovely.My boyfriend also gave me some fizzy coca cola as a test and it felt like it was scratching an itch all the way down my throat and into my stomach. I was SO aware of all my senses at this point.

Then things hit their peak and I started seeing roots and leaves and ivy curling round the walls growing up really fast over the walls & ceiling. I remember thinking & saying to my boyfriend that mother nature was reclaiming this house and turning it back into nature, I did not know what time was at this point I was still in good spirits and laughing my head off at the fact that I couldn't put any meaning to time it was 7.30pm at this point and I'd taken them at 5. The time thing was really disorientating as I just could not put meaning to it, I was asking the time a lot and at first found it funny that I could not even think of time as a concept. I was also having trouble remembering things that had happened only hours before, I couldn't place events in time and I couldn't like think of anything from before the mushrooms or what would happen after the mushrooms, for instance stuff I needed to do the next day. I can tell that I started worrying at this point as I was really trying to think of normal things and remember what my life was like! I felt so far away from anything. I was asking my boyfriend over and over again if it was really half 7 and what does that even mean.
I then started seeing everything as if we were in the woodland but from something small's point of view.I could see trees and was imagining the roots of the trees pulling everything back into the ground I could feel roots entwining round mine and my boyfriend's legs rooting us to the earth. I could feel and sort of see (more a feeling) our fingers entwining and turning into branches. Everything in the room was glowing with a muddy green/yellow of like moss land.

Then I suddenly felt like my boyfriend wasn't part of it anymore and it felt like a great loss. I was going really insular I proper missed looking at his face as if I looked at him he turned into a toad or a troll or something from Wind in the Willows or Alice in Wonderland. I could see what Lewis Carrol was seeing when he wrote Alice in Wonderland! I was laughing a bit though cos it was soooo cliched everything I was seeing was the exact imagery that all the famous trippy artists painted and authors described! I felt like I'd taken the mushrooms so they could show me what their natural woodland world was like.

I could not do anything and I did not know anything at all, I lost touch with reality at this point and couldn't tell how many times my boyfriend had said things I was hearing him ask me what time I thought it was and what it felt like over and over and over so I was annoyed and told him to stop asking me questions. He has now told me he barely asked me anything. I didn't know what was outside the four walls of my room and it felt like I couldn't get out of this tiny space, if I moved my arms out of the space something weird would happen and I wouldn't remember them being there. Then I did start worrying about how long this was gunna last, I kept asking my boyfriend but time didn't make any sense and it felt like he wouldn't tell me or he'd ask those questions over and over which I know now wasn't really happening. I think that's when I started panicking, I felt SO far away from my boyfriend and my normal life, it felt like years since Id felt normal or seen any normal colours. Then everything became all dingy and damp and scary, everything I was doing or saying was like edited weird. Like a badly edited clip show, I'd talk and then half way through what I was saying everything would look different and like my voice would suddenly get louder, I started seeing some mad stuff, I was thinking I'd angered mother earth for picking the mushrooms and taking them lightly and she was gunna punish me and reclaim the house while we were in it, I tried to keep calm but I was panicking at this point, I was talking to my boyfriend a bit asking when it would stop but what he said didn't make any sense, I was literally holding on to him at this point trying to stay with him as his voice got further away and I just wanted to see his face but I couldn't look at him. Then it got scary I was literally waking up from one trip and going straight into another or waking up in the middle of a trip that I'd think was in another trip proper deep like inception. Trips within trips. I felt so far away from normality I can't even remember what I was visually seeing at this point but I know it was mad & scary. Every time my boyfriend moved he was so big and like leaning over me and I was scared to look at his face. It was like the cliched image of a scary forest with trees laughing manically and the earth coming alive to swallow me up.

I'd close my eyes but that was worse and I felt like it was so deep in there that I'd get lost forever. Then I started thinking I was gunna stay like that forever or go insane. This must be where my ego returned a little. By this point it was proper pissing me off and I was saying I wanted to go back to normal. Things were getting really bleak and dark and I was so scared I thought I was dying. I started panicking and crying hysterically, asking my boyfriend to make it stop but I wasn't sure if I was saying things out loud or whether he was still there. I started getting paranoid as I could again hear my boyfriend saying questions over and over and I saw him on the laptop. I started thinking he had turned against me and was laughing at me with people online and trying to make my trip worse and blag my head more. The scariest part was not knowing what was real and what wasn't. It was like I was going in a room and then another room and then another getting further away from my boyfriend. I really couldn't tell if I was saying things out loud or not and in the trip I was trying to shout out to my boyfriend. I couldn't even see him when I opened my eyes at this point. I started seeing weird creatures laughing at me and because my boyfriend felt so far away I was missing him so much and just wanted to see his face. I was crying my eyes out saying make it stop and I want to go home! When I asked how long it would last I couldn't understand my boyfriend's answer and couldn't be sure if I'd said it properly. I couldn't feel normal in anyway it was just trip after trip after trip getting darker and darker, I'd just wake up from one trip and go deeper into another then another then another. I was distraught at this point but not in a fearful way more in a childlike upset kinda way and my boyfriend tells me I sounded childlike when I was talking to him asking him to make it stop (haha! embarrassing!) and I kept imaging it lasting for ever. It just felt never ending, every minute felt like an hour. I then took some propranalol (80mg) around 9pm and that calmed the anxiety down but didn't stop the tripping. Once the anxiety had gone I was just proper fed up of it, like it was ticking me off. That weird clippy thing like it had all been filmed in a different order and then put back together badly, was proper ticking me off and EVERYTHING had this sickly green and yellow glow over it. I proper hated it at that point but was calm so knew I had to ride it out, then my boyfriend gave me some Milk Thistle which helps your liver filter stuff out and that proper helped (may have been placebo as I was willing it to work) . It started getting to a point where I could be calm and ride it out.

The main thing that freaked me out was that I couldn't look at my boyfriend's face and that was all I wanted. So then I was crying more out of true emotion and missing him. It felt like I had lost him. I just felt sooooo sad that I couldn't see him. I was looking at his face behind his hair when he wasn't looking at me but there was no way we could make eye contact which was torture cos he was trying to comfort me.

Then I was just proper tired and pissed off with the colours (being an artist I just longed to see some normal colour pallettes!) I remember being so fed up of the colours I was LOVING looking at the blue carpet just because it was something different than green! I was saying if I never see green again it'll be too soon and green is my favourite colour!

Then we talked without looking at each other but holding hands as it wore off and I just kept staring at the blue carpet, and I felt ok then. Then he suggested we go sit on the doorstep cos this room was looking SO dingy to me with that haze over it and everything was horrible, so we did and that helped loads seeing normal things. It was 11pm before I could look at his face, I felt like I'd been away for an eternity and I just missed him soooo much, I think that was the main cause of the worry. I felt like Id lost him at one point and couldn't be sure he was coming back.
Reflecting on it there are a few factors I reckon made it go how it did. It was my first time so I was a bit anxious to start with, I hadn't expected it to be so strong as my boyfriend thought it wasn't enough! Also the room we are living in at the moment, is proper grim, like it's a cellar of a run-down house and it's in really bad disrepair (were waiting to move!) the main scary parts were losing touch with time and reality and feeling so far away from my mr!